


Adrift

by Schmuzz



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - Let's Play, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schmuzz/pseuds/Schmuzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After cramming into an escape pod together, Michael and another crewmate named Ryan team up in order to survive on a hostile alien planet. Things are pretty grim, what with space porcupines and weird-ass bird things trying to eat them, but least they have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> Based off Ryan and Michael's Let's Play of Capsized.
> 
> Feel free to follow my rt sideblog on tumblr (teamcrazydicks.tumblr.com) where you can get fic updates sooner and prompt me if you want.

"Ryan, look out!” The other man instinctively ducked, letting me fire at the creature that was slowly unsticking itself from the dense foliage above Ryan’s head. It let out a withered shriek, claws curling into its body as it dropped, limply, to the ground. Ryan and I silently scanned the thick vines and brambles that seemed to line every surface of the planet, searching for movement.

Eventually, Ryan relaxed his stance and looked down towards the monster at his feet. Idly, he jabbed it with his foot.

“Don’t kick it,” I complained. “It could be like, filled with acid or some shit.”

“Nah, look at it – it’s like a… space porcupine.” Nevertheless he hopped over the carcass and followed me along the path.

It felt like it had been hours since the crash – maybe it had been. The last moments on the spaceship had been spent with the blare of alarms in my ears, and my vision awash with red from flashing emergency lights. It had been a blind rush to the escape pods – two hundred or so crew members with how many ways out? I didn’t know, but as I ran, pushed, and stumbled past everyone in my desperation to find a pod that hadn’t already left, I swore there wasn’t enough for everyone.

It was only by dumb luck I stumbled into the one Ryan was in – though I had no idea who the other passenger was, at the time. He was just a faceless figure to me, already dressed in a protective suit, the orange tint of his helmet too opaque to make out features, a communications link not set up rendering him as good as mute within his own clothes. I just stood in the threshold of the compact vessel like a goddamn idiot, my heart in my throat. It had taken me ages to find  _this_  pod; if this guy pushed me out, where would I go?

Luckily for me, instead of shoving me away the other reached out to pull me in by the front of my uniform; only then did the door to the pod close, with the pair of us inside. The other’s movement revealed another protective suit hanging up. I wasn’t even done putting on the pants before the engines roared to life, and we detached from the ship. The escape vessel began its turbulent flight down to an unknown world below and I was still trying to dress myself, all the while some faceless crewmate was off to the side, I didn’t even know if they were staring at me, or through the tiny window over my shoulder. I guess I shouldn’t have cared either way, it seemed to take enough brain power to figure out how to suit up without falling over like an incompetent asshole – that was something Gavin would do. I swallowed as I thought of my friend, any of my friends – had they found a pod? Would they be okay? My movements were clumsy and troubled as I focused on them, and by the time I had let my visor slide over my face I was fucking terrified.

The moment I had suited up, the other man connected our communication links together. It was proximity based, he told me, so we had to stay close. I thought they were practically on each other’s dicks in the goddamn pod, but decided to be polite and stay quiet.

The other man introduced himself as Ryan; his voice was deep and clear and friendly. It reminded me of Jack, yet another one of my friends on the ship; another missing person. I tried to stay calm, and was suddenly thankful that Ryan couldn’t see my face.

We landed. Roughly. I thought for the second time that day that I was about to die. Once we were on the ground Ryan pointed a gloved finger west. “Did you see those mountains?” he asked me. I shrugged; I had been too busy trying not to scream. He carried on, “If we’re going to make a rescue signal, it’s going to be at a high altitude, so we better head that way.” I didn’t know who the hell he was to know about rescue signals, but it was better and more reasonable than whatever I could come up with at the moment, so I dutifully followed him out of the pod – our suits had come with guns, and I clutched mine reverently as we walked into an unexplored world.

Since then our journey had been interrupted by large rocks and ship debris blocking our way; that was cleared easily enough with the gravity gun setting on the weapons, but even more frequently were the… things.

All of the alien planets I had been to were colonized; most of them had no intelligent life to begin with, and were filled with other humans. This place was miles above my experience level, though, what with the pools of acid, flying bugs (or birds) that tried to carry us off, and… space porcupines. Everything pulsed with life, even the rocks seemed to tremble, as though there was something inside them, living, waiting to burst out and attack.

“Think we can grapple up there?” I asked, pointing to a high ledge.

“Probably,” Ryan moved to the edge of the platform we were standing on. He fiddled with his gun for a moment before a thin, silvery rope shot into the air, digging itself high onto the wall above. He tugged experimentally and ran off the edge. We had done this a hundred times, but I still expected the rope to snap as we flew through the air. It didn’t, but instead I heard a panicked, “ _Oh God_!” from down below. I ran to the brink.

“Ryan! Are you okay?” The rope slowly retracted, pulling Ryan up to my level. The feet of his suit looked scorched.

“There – there may have been a pool of acid down there,” he said, shakily. “Guess I should’ve looked before I leaped. Leapt?” He seemed to consider it for a moment. “Uh, hang on, I’ll just go up from here then.” He slowly inched upwards, and clung desperately to the wall once he made it to the other side, hauling himself up to the ledge. He disappeared from my vision for a moment and I was alone. Then he reappeared, head popping back into my line of sight. “Okay, your turn.”

I frowned to myself, but nodded and shot my grappling hook – several feet higher than where Ryan had placed his. I ran off the ledge, careful to curl my feet up as I went. A moment of weightlessness passed, spoiled by the glowing acidic floor rushing at me. I let out a breath when my feet collided with the rock wall instead. I started to walk upwards, letting the rope pull in as I moved.

Halfway up, I chanced a look behind me. The pit was huge; more of a lake really, oozing out in all directions farther than I could see. Glancing farther to one side, I paused.

In the distance, half submerged into the pool, there was an escape pod. The hatch was open. “Jesus…” I whispered to myself. I felt my fingers constrict on the rope even tighter. I realized that my legs were shaking from more than just the harsh impact on the rock wall. That could have been  _us_.

“Michael,” Ryan called out to me, making my head snap up to where he was. Ryan leaned over the ledge, watching me – or at least it looked like it, with the goddamn helmets on you never knew for sure.

“Did you see…?” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

Ryan didn’t answer for a moment. “ _You_  saw,” he said eventually. “We can’t do anything for them now. Get up here, I found a cave.” I swallowed, stomach roiling. The entire day had been a set of hills and chasms, split between feeling prudent and fucking terrified; I hated it. On the ship the worst thing that had ever happened was when we ran into a meteor field and suffered some turbulence. But this wasn’t something that was happening to me, was it? This was a movie or a video game. At the very least, this was the sort of disaster that happened to  _other_  people, not me, not anyone I knew. In that moment I swore the stench of acid had permeated through the filtration system in my suit, making my eyes water and my mouth burn with every intake of breath. I ascended, painfully slow, Ryan peering down at me all the while.

When I was close enough to the ledge, Ryan put out his hand. I took it without a thought, and helped to haul myself over to safety. I rolled onto my back and spied a series of small ledges, all leading up to an eventual crack in the darkness – an alien sky hung above me, jaundiced and just as deadly as the underground crevices we were forced to navigate.

I stood, albeit shakily, and saw Ryan still observing me. “So, uh,” I cleared my throat. “How about that cave?” Ryan turned around and lumbered into the mouth of the alcove. I followed him.

The cave was void of monsters, and only went back about fifteen feet. Ryan turned to me. “You mind pulling a boulder up here to block the mouth of the cave? We can rest here.” I swallowed and nodded, palming my gun nervously as I headed back outside. The dipping gorge and ridges of the canyon were quiet – we must have shot every goddamn thing that moved in the last five miles. I spotted a rock several shelves below us, off to the side. It was almost as large as our escape pod; the perfect size for a makeshift door. I would have to climb down to get a decent angle for the gravity gun to lift it, and the thought of straying from Ryan, even for that short amount of time – I shook my head. I couldn’t depend on the other man for something as simple as  _this_. I mean, I liked Ryan, but who even knew if he liked me? The last thing I wanted to do was piss him off and make him leave.

Pebbles and dirt came loose under me feet as I slid down the covered rock face. I passed the growing vines that looked like snakes, and the flowers that looked like small volcanoes waiting to erupt. Nearly there, I thought to himself. Almost, almost…

“Wh- FUCK! SHIT!” I struggled as claws dug into my shoulders – it was one of those flying creatures with the swollen, bulbous head, a type of alien bird, or giant bug maybe? It had been hiding in the ceiling and had swooped down, along with three smaller versions. I struggled to change the setting of my gun as my body swung around like a helpless doll; arms hanging high from the way I was being grabbed. I managed to shoot a line of bullets to one monster, then another – the third made a swipe at me and I was still being carried higher. “ _Shit shit shit!_ ” I let out another yell before kicking the last creature as it tried to sink its claws into my right foot. That made it stagger in its flight path, giving me just enough time to aim and –

I was falling. The fucking alien shit thing exploded above me a second later, and my helmet was splattered with yellow secretion. I thought about screaming, but could only take in a sharp breath: How high up had I been? As I tumbled, all I could see was the vast pool of green, and I knew that even if the fall didn’t kill me, the acid definitely would. There were probably a hundred things I could do to save myself, but my body seemed paralyzed in my own suit, hands lax around my gun, the thought that I should change my setting back and just hook onto something didn’t even register.

“Michael!” My body jolted, but not from a fatal meeting with the ground.

“Ah, fuck,” I wanted to rub my hands on my face, but instead I wrapped my shaking fingers around the curves of my weapon and blasted the remaining alien as it made a dive for me. The gravity pull Ryan had trapped me in disappeared, and I went back to falling – this time, just a mere foot or so – to the shrouded ground below. I let out a grunt anyway.

I closed my eyes and swallowed. My neck had been shoved by the sudden stop that had saved me, but obviously I would survive that. Almost dying for the tenth time in one day? As embarrassing as it was I struggled to not cry, or hyperventilate, or vomit. “Michael?” Ryan called out, stepping closer to me. I continued to keep my eyes shut. “Are you okay?”

“Does it look like I’m fucking okay?” My voice shook. I opened one eye, squinting up at the orange glint Ryan’s helmet possessed. Like fucking aviator sunglasses or something. I wondered what the other man looked like as he scrutinized me, equally masked under my own blue helmet. “Can’t leave me alone for five fucking seconds until some shit-eating monster tries to fucking murder me…”

“Fuck,” Ryan concluded helpfully. “I meant are you bleeding? Are you hurt?”

“No I,” I paused. “I don’t think so. But… well how would I know, anyway?”

“Can you get up?”

“In this fucking thing? Yeah, give me a hand, will you?” Our suits were bulky and especially top-heavy. It was for the life support system built into the back of the material, but I was grateful that Ryan had no qualms about putting out his gloved hand, letting me haul myself upwards without looking like even more of an asshole. “Thanks,” I muttered.

I glanced around. “Well at least we’re on the right ledge,” I said, switching the setting of the gun back and picking the rock up like it was made out of foam.

“Back to the cave,” Ryan announced, sounding perfectly content with the plan. Our steady trek upwards was quick and uneventful, and we easily barricaded ourselves into the small alcove. “That’ll hold us until we want to go back out again.”

“We’re stopping here?”

“Just for a little while,” Ryan took out something clipped onto his belt – it might have been one of the devices he had pulled from… that other teammate. The one that hadn’t made it. I shivered at the thought. I didn’t know what was worse – the fact that I must have known who that person was, or that, because of the tinted helmet, I had no idea who I had lost in that instant. It could have been one of my friends; Ray or Geoff or… maybe it was no one I would miss that much. I was unsure whether to mourn or not, or to what extent.

When we had come across the body, pierced by a spear, of all things, laying on a stone table like a ritual sacrifice, Ryan hadn’t said anything, either, merely inspected the scene like he was trying to figure out the exact series of events between us finding the distress message and arriving at the source of it.

Well, I didn’t need to know what happened. Wasn’t it obvious enough? Our ship failed, everyone squeezed into escape pods (sometimes two at a time, like me and Ryan were forced to) and we crashed all over a random-ass, hostile planet so that we could be slaughtered in an isolated alien world. Looking over, I couldn’t help but think of the rock blocking the mouth of the cave as less of a protective barrier between us and a warzone, and instead a heavy, crushing weight, like the lid to a sarcophagus, sealing us inside. I took solace in the fact that I wasn’t claustrophobic.

I startled when I heard a hiss, and looked back to the other man. “Ryan, no!” He had unsealed the rim of his helmet and let it push back, leaving his head exposed. “We don’t know if the air is poisonous or not – what are you, suicidal?”

“I just checked the air components. With this.” He shook the small device in his hand and handed it over to me. I cautiously looked at the readings: 12% carbon dioxide; 25% oxygen; 80% nitrogen and the rest a scant mix of hydrogen and water vapor – in other words, not too drastically different from Earth, and not lethal. “I wanted to take off parts of the suit that got damaged,” he explained, already removing his gloves as he talked. “You know, to fix any tears. Your shoulders got ripped up pretty bad.” He laid a hand high on my back, fingers brushing against the rip in the suit’s material. I bit the inside of my cheek, handing back the device to Ryan and slowly taking my gloves off as well.

“If I get air poisoning because of this you’re out of my will.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “You have a will?”

“Yeah, it was going to say, ‘Ryan can totally have half my house because he’s super cool and doesn’t let monsters eat me,’ but if you fuck it up and I die in a cave, then you’re not getting shit.” I took a breath and released the seal on my helmet. The air of the planet crept in; warm, damp, smelling of rotten plants. It wasn’t like the cool interior of my suit, but being out in the air made me realize how sweaty I had been, feeding off of adrenaline for the last few hours. I struggled for some moments before slipping the entire top of my suit off, then my pants and boots. Soon I stood in the black, tight-fitting uniform I usually wore around the ship. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to get a closer look at how torn up my suit – the one defense on this shit hole of a planet – had gotten.

I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t dying to know what, exactly, Ryan looked like.

Not long after we landed, Ryan had explained that he had been an engineer for the ship – on the technological side, like making sure the life support systems were working, not on the making sure the engine didn’t fucking explode side, which was good, I didn’t want to resent the guy or anything, even if neither of us had any clue what made the ship crash in the first place. Everyone I knew, including myself, worked with navigation or scanning the surroundings for debris or other vessels. Our ship wasn’t gargantuan –  _hadn’t_  been, rather – and I had been on it for almost two years, barring some vacation time, but I had never had a reason to cross into Ryan’s path.

In the last few hours, though, we had been getting rather acquainted.

I liked Ryan, was actually surprised how easily I had taken to him. He was capable and calm – most of the time – and didn’t seem to be taken aback by my side comments. He was pleasant to talk to, and, well yeah, he had saved my ass a few times, also. That was a plus.

The rock at the mouth of the cave had left a few small cracks of light to shine through, and standing by it gave off just enough illumination that I could see Ryan’s face when he turned to look at me. He was older, only by a few years, and taller and broader by the same noticeable increments. His hair was slightly damp with sweat, the color not quite blonde. He reached up a hand to fidget with it, setting it into a smooth curve over his forehead and behind his temple.

His features weren’t overtly attractive at first – not like I could say any different about myself – but there was  _something_  about him, the way one of his eyebrows quirked, or the polite smile he fixed on his face, or the shape of his nose; everything seemed to fit together just right for him.

Belatedly, I realized that I had been staring much longer than I should have been.

To be fair, Ryan had been looking at me just as long. I decided it was because neither of us had seen the other and were curious as to what we looked like after so long. There was nothing weird about that, right? I coughed into my fist, reveling in the fact that I could feel my own skin again – fingers curled against my palm, knuckle against my mouth, it was comforting. “So, the suits?” I asked. Ryan blinked and cocked his head.

“I, yeah, right.” He glanced to the heap of material on the floor beside him, crouching down. He fiddled with the chest plate for a moment before there was a clicking sound – the room flooded with light.

 “Whoa, that’s a bright-ass flashlight! It’s like a little sun,” Ryan laughed and angled the chest piece so that it was against the rock, lighting up the back of the cave. It was empty, smooth stone – I already knew it was vacant of any deadly monsters, but it was nice to see for myself first-hand.

I knelt by my suit, turning it over for inspection. “Shit,” I muttered. Ryan was right about the tears – I could stick my goddamn finger into the slashes in the material. It didn’t break through to the inside of the suit, but its depth must have been half an inch, or a little deeper. The metal lining of the chest and back plate, and the small jetpack running along the middle of the suit’s back that had run out of fuel ages ago, were adorned with smaller scratches. Superficial but numerous. “The suit’s a fucking mess. How are we supposed to fix this?”

“Look in your pack, they usually give some sort of material for punctures in the suit.”

“Where are the – oh.” I ran my hands along the arms of my suit and my fingernail dug into a small hatch. “I wondered why the arms were so bulky.” Ryan hummed, snapping one of the compartments on his suit open. The cave was quiet aside from the sound of us rustling through our ensembles.

In the left arm, I found several small packets, each as large as a matchbook and about as thick. I squinted at them in the artificial light. “Oh, dude, I think they gave us instant pasta!”

“Food packs? Yeah. You need water, though. I’ve only seen concentrated pools of acid, so far.”

“There must be actual water around though, what else would let the plants grow?”

“Hm, good point. The actual number of planets that have advanced life without water sources can still be counted on one hand.” I smiled to myself; I was never destined to be a hyper-intelligent scientist, and Ryan’s job probably suggested that he was much smarter than I was, but I never felt dumb talking to him, and I didn’t get the impression that Ryan was inwardly grimacing at all the stupid shit that came out of my mouth.

The other arm had a roll of tape. “Think we can use this?” I asked. Ryan was inspecting his own roll. “I think it has one of those fusing surfaces that permanently binds things together.”

“Yeah, good idea.” He set it aside, and I dug further into the compartment. Just as my hand closed around a small can, I heard Ryan mumble, “Oh, thank God.”

“What?”

“Nanobots,” Ryan held up the can – it looked like hairspray; it was chrome colored with heavy black lettering on the side.

“Nanobots? What are they going to do, clean up an oil spill?”

“No, they’re not deconstructive. Not these ones.” He examined the can. They can turn into whatever composition of chemicals you need through prolonged contact.”

“They’ll repair the suit?”

“Mm-hmm. Just spray it on. And try not to get it on your skin. Unless you want another finger or something.”

“A third arm would be pretty sweet.” I fished out my can and set it aside – I knew the back of the suit needed work, but I wanted to make sure there weren’t other major abrasions on the material. The toes of one of my boots was blackened from when I had almost gone into a pit of acid, before we realized that there were actual  _pools of acid_  on the planet. The fingers and palms of my gloves had grown thinner from so much time gripping my gun and scrabbling over the controls and rough terrain of the planet. There was a hole in the right shin and left thigh of my pants from bullets the natives had shot at us, too. But still, the shoulders were the worst; I imagined the claws of that alien bird monster sinking through the suit, into the flesh of my back. Without meaning to I shivered. Ryan glanced up at me; to cover myself I ventured, “So, why the mountain?”

“The mountain?”

“You said we had to head west, and all I could see was a huge ass mountain. What’s there?”

Ryan, who had been inspecting his boots, leveled me with an impatient look. “They don’t teach you guys anything in training anymore, do they?”

“Wow, way to sound like my dad.” Ryan just raised an eyebrow at me. “I mean, crash safety protocols are like knowing what to do if a plane goes down – it never happens, why pay attention?”

“Because that’s what where idea of emergency training comes from?” Ryan said, a little annoyed. “Survivors are meant to create a distress signal, usually something that would interfere with a passing ship’s transmission or radio waves, which a ship can trace back to its origin point. Some pods have a small tower that can be transported – ours didn’t. But when we saw that… other guy, he had a communications device that was powerful enough to broadcast outside of the planet.”

“But the signal was jammed,” I said.

“Meaning that there’s a signal to start with. Someone has already set up the tower, we just need to find it and fix it.”

“And you think it’ll be on the mountain?”

“It’s typical that, if you’re going to send out a signal, you do it from somewhere high up. It’s the most likely place in the immediate area, and everyone on the ship landed close enough together that we could assume they went there.”

“Okay… Well, what will we do to fix it?” Ryan shrugged again, examining his boots.

“We won’t know until we get there. The communications device will probably let us know when we’re close. At this point we’re playing it by ear, you know?”

“Well, what happens when we get there and everyone else is dead?” I mumbled, idly picking at the loose fabric.

“I’m sure they’re not –”

“ _We’ve_  almost died. Probably six times each. In the last hour alone you almost took a fucking acid bath, and I almost got carried away to that fucking thing’s nest.”

“But we didn’t die, Michael, that’s the point.”

I looked over at Ryan. “We’re going to. I mean, probably. How the hell are you  _not_  worried about that? I’m scared out of my goddamn mind.” The admission was shocking, even to me. But it was true; ever since we got here it’s been touch-and-go, and was it so far-fetched to say that there was a decent chance we wouldn’t make it out of this alive? Ryan was smart, I imagined he would at least be able to understand where I was coming from.

Instead he looked pissed off, like my pessimism was blowing holes in his plan. I furrowed my eyebrows; what, did he think I was acting like this for attention? Like I wasn’t embarrassed that I had to confess not just to myself, but someone I only just met, that I was afraid? Ever since we had our first close call I had been walking around feeling like my skin was too tight and my insides were begging to come out: This was not a planet we could survive in. Every other hint at humans had proved that. Out of two hundred crew members, how many had gone down with the ship, or not survived the landing, or just got killed as soon as they had stepped out of the pod? This was the kind of place where the longer you stayed, the more your chance of survival dwindled down to nothing. Who knew how much time we had left, if we had any at all?

Abruptly Ryan stood up. He was taller than me anyway, but since I was still sitting he positively loomed over me. The way the flashlight had been placed made one side of his face totally shrouded in darkness. For the very first time, Ryan’s presence made me feel nervous. “You really think that?”

His voice made me want to shrink away, made me wish I had just kept my damn mouth shut. I didn’t say anything.

Ryan went, harshly: “Because if you do, you can just shoot yourself in the foot right now and die on your own terms, but if we have any chance of making it up the mountain to radio for help – which we do, by the way – we’re not going to accomplish that if you want to lay down and die.”

“I don’t want to –”

“Then stop acting like it. You think you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment if you think we can make it? Let me tell you, you’re right: there’s a million different ways we can die here. But if you think you’re going to be thinking, ‘Gee, I wish I didn’t get my hopes up’ before you go, then you’re delusional. And you’re wrong. I don’t need that shit, and neither do you. Understand?”

The air pressed down on us, and for a moment I could only stare, dumbfounded, up at Ryan, who still looked furious and fear-worthy, bathed in the chiaroscuro light. Finally I said, “Fuck, fine, yeah man I understand.”

Ryan sighed, then, shoulders sagging. He crouched down in front of me so we were level, and suddenly he was out of the darkness again and looked normal. He smiled at me. It looked apologetic. He stared down at my hands, at my suit. Finally he looked back to me and went, “Do you want to start spraying the suits?” As if nothing had happened.

Apparently I had lost my voice, and gaped at him for an embarrassingly long time. “I… uh, yeah,” I whispered. He stood up, and brushed down the legs of his pants. I tried not to look at Ryan, even if I wanted to – had he really been that angry? He didn’t seem capable of flashing back and forth between emotions like that. I distractedly grabbed the canister and rolled my suit over so its back was facing up. I uncapped the can, found which way the solution would come out of, and proceeded to thickly spray along the shoulders, watching a gray, sparkling solution spritz out, coating the white material. I shook the can again and sprayed down the damaged toe of my boot, and the pads of my gloves. It smelt vaguely gaseous, probably whatever had kept the nanobots pressurized for so long. I set the can down carefully and stared down at my suit, the wet shine reflecting the glow of the flashlight.

“You finished?” Ryan asked quietly.

“I, yeah. You?” Ryan nodded. I heard the gentle fizzle of the nanobots, pouring over the damaged parts of their suits. “How long will this take?” I shifted against the rock face. It was cool despite the warm air, and soothed my skin as it seeped through the back of my clothes.

“I don’t know – an hour or less.” Ryan settled next to me, legs stretched out as he watched the metallic ooze dip into the tears and burns on our outfits. “Or more,” He shook his shoulders as a show of uncertainty, and I sighed. I put my knees up and rested my head on the top of them, fingers curling around my calves. “Don’t suppose you brought any cards with you.”

“Yeah, as I was running for my life off a fucking crashing ship I thought, hey, might want to bring Monopoly with me in case I get holed up in a cave for a few hours.”

“I hate Monopoly.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Well, I mean, the last time I played, I was really sick. Everyone kept telling me to go home I sounded so awful.”

“Huh,” I closed his eyes. Imagining Ryan under a pile of blankets, sick and miserable and being chastised for not taking care of himself… it was cute, in a weird way.

“Maybe we should sleep,” Ryan suggested.

“Not tired,” I persisted, even though I kept my eyes closed. “And with all those things out there? No fucking way.”

“I imagine we’re safe here. Safe as we can be, anyway. How many times have we moved boulders to see monsters on the other side?”

I grimaced. “A fucking lot,”

“Which means they can’t move the rocks themselves.”

“What about the natives?”

“We haven’t seen them since, uh, you know.” Since we found the dead crewmate. “Look, the adrenaline isn’t going to last forever, and we’re stuck here for a while anyway.” I considered the idea, just for a moment. I felt better like this, sitting, without my suit, Ryan pressed against my side. Already his outburst had past; I think I was desperate to be close to another living person that I was able to be apathetic about Ryan’s words. Sitting next to him was probably the most relaxed I’d ever be while on the planet. The very thought of it made me yawn. I expected Ryan to give me shit for proving him right – that maybe I was tired and we should sleep – but he didn’t. I heard a small click, and after tensing for a moment I heard Ryan mutter, “It’s just the flashlight, don’t worry,” in a soothing voice.

 _Don’t worry_. I wanted to counter that we should be worried – very, very worried, but the quiet reassuring way Ryan spoke made me pause. I replayed the phrase in my head:  _Don’t worry_. Not just because there wasn’t anything to worry about – this time, at least, but because all the other times I was in danger, Ryan had helped me, saved me. We saved each other a handful of times since we squeezed into that tiny escape pod and crashed onto this godforsaken planet. As long as Ryan was there to help me back on my feet, there hadn’t, in the end, been anything to worry about.

My body went lax, legs falling to one side and curling towards myself, knees against Ryan’s thighs. My hands folded loosely in my lap; my head lulled onto Ryan’s shoulder. I waited for Ryan to say something. When a few seconds passed and he didn’t, I said, “I’m going to sleep,” and tried not to guess what Ryan was thinking.

We both almost died like, five times each today, I reasoned to myself. If I wanted to put my head on my teammate’s shoulder, then that was completely fucking justified and no one was allowed to give me shit.

I thought I could hear Ryan’s breathing, or feel the slight rise and depression in his shoulder as he inhaled and exhaled. I tried to count how long it was for him to take in a breath, pause, and then then breathe out – was it slowing as it did when people began to fall asleep, or was that my own breathing, evening out as the minutes passed?

My right hand spilled out of my lap as my limbs slackened, landing palm up on Ryan’s thigh. I didn’t even think of moving it, or what Ryan might think about me almost on top of him, because at that point I was seconds from going unconscious…

I probably hadn’t been out long. Probably. My hand twitched along the stone ground, and my ribs felt sore for some reason. Maybe from getting battered from all the monsters outside. I knew that hadn’t been a dream – if it had been, I would have bolted out of bed, sweat drying on my body. Here I felt peaceful, temporarily, of course. Something was tickling my ear. Maybe that’s what woke me up? It took me a long time to focus enough on the sensations to pinpoint what was going on.

Oh.

That’s it – fingers through my hair. Gentle, very gentle. I doubted one of the aliens abducted me in my sleep, then. That meant it was Ryan, and on reflex I smiled at the thought. The pressure was light, and soothing, and sleep inducing. I had half a mind to drift off again, but that was just wasting time, and I knew it. Still, I didn’t move right away, feeling the heat of Ryan’s hand dip just above my forehead, sometimes brushing the tip of my ear, and curling towards the crown of my head.

I realized, belatedly, that Ryan petting me meant that I was resting in his lap; that would explain my ribs – apparently it wasn’t comfortable to have the top of your torso at an angle for… however long it had been. I lifted my head, just slightly, and Ryan pulled his hand away – I almost whined at the loss.

Instead I rolled over, Ryan’s knees digging into my spine. It was too dark to see anything, but I knew he was there, looking down at me. I wondered if Ryan wouldn’t comment on the fact that I had ended up in his lap, or that he had spent who knows how long playing with my hair, just like how he didn’t mention me cuddling up to him to fall asleep in the first place: So far, Ryan was doing a tremendous job of not pointing out the huge fucking man-crush I was currently sporting, whether based on close proximity or adrenaline brain swelling or my own stupidity, I didn’t know.

In the darkness I heard Ryan’s voice go: “Please tell me you don’t want a belly rub, too.” His voice was still low and quiet; it made me shiver, and added another piece of evidence to the rapidly growing pile of gay feelings I had for the man who had protected me.

I tried to save it, though. “Sorry for collapsing and trapping you.”

Ryan hummed and reached to the side. He flicked on one of the flashlights, sending the familiar ghostly light bouncing off the edges of the cave. “It’s fine, you were headed that way anyway. I didn’t want you to bump your head on the way down.”

Meaning that Ryan had, at some point, actually guided me into his lap. Interesting. I threaded my fingers together and laid them on my stomach, staring up at Ryan, who in turn was staring down at me. “Did you get to sleep?”

“Yeah, a bit. I was in and out, mostly, but I feel like we’ve been here a while – enough for me to get a few hours.”

“Okay. Good.” Logically, I ought to sit up now, but I had no real desire to. My eyes slipped closed again. I wouldn’t fall asleep – but it felt nice. It was the first thing in ages that felt nice, in fact. Even before the ship crashed, I hadn’t done this sort of thing in a long time – even if it was an older crewmate that I had only met some hours ago and decidedly not a girlfriend, I would take what I could get – I wondered, briefly, if we were to actually get rescued, if Ryan would still let me lie on him, if I would wake up to his hand in my hair.

As if I had put the action into Ryan’s head, I felt his fingers come down, again, and brush the hair off my forehead. “Don’t fall asleep again,” Ryan said.

“I won’t.” I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment before I ventured, “Feels nice.” Ryan’s fingers went past my temple and touched my neck. He chuckled, and I felt warm all over again. “Ryan,”

“Yeah?”

“Remember the person we saw in the temple? And the escape pod in the acid?” Ryan’s hand stilled in my hair. “Don’t you think that’s going to be us, too? Even if you don’t want it to be.”

It was wholly silent again, but I didn’t care. Ryan was trapped – by me still laying on him, and by the question. He couldn’t dodge it this time. Out of curiosity, I opened my eyes. The flashlight made Ryan’s skin look pale, and his eyes shine brightly from the light. “You want to know what I think?”

I bit down a, ‘ _That’s why I asked, dumbass’_. I wasn’t talking to Gavin, after all. “Yeah.” Ryan looked up for a moment, and then his fingers went back to my hair. I let out a sigh at the renewed contact.

“I think that first off, we got really lucky that our pod landed somewhere… relatively safe. But I also think that if we were by ourselves, we wouldn’t have made it as far as we have, either.” I felt my chest constrict at the thought: He was right, after all. I wasn’t a bad fighter, but I had no idea where to go, or how to make a signal for help like Ryan obviously did. “So,” Ryan continued on, “If we’re together, we can make it. At this point, we’re closer to the summit than the escape pod. It’s like, statistically proven that we’ll survive.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

I eyed him. “…Really?”

"Yes!” I made a show of considering it before finally getting up. I went on my knees and made a show of cracking my back.

 “Alright, I believe that you believe.”

“And do you believe… what I believe?” Ryan’s face adopted a confused expression as he mirrored the phrase, making me laugh in a short burst.

“Yeah, yeah, I believe that we can kick ass and get rescued and everything. You convinced me.”

“Oh, good. And, for what it’s worth – sorry I snapped at you, before.” Ryan’s eyes raked over me intently. “I guess, I mean… I don’t want anything to happen to you; I didn’t want you to get hurt or worse because you were convinced we wouldn’t make it anyway.”

I looked at him for a while, my stomach fluttering nervously. “It’s okay, Ryan,” I replied lamely. I meant it, and was glad that Ryan really wasn’t someone prone to random bursts of rage – we didn’t need two of me running around, after all. “Thanks,” I said. “Just, thanks.” I pursed my lips before deciding to take a look at my suit. I didn’t see the wet sheen of nanobots on it anymore, and as I leaned over, and ran a hand down the shoulders of my suit, I felt that they were completely healed over, as though nothing had dug its claws into them in the first place, “Hey, it’s all fixed!” My boot wasn’t blackened either, and I wasted no time in struggling into my suit again. It felt too tight after being out of it for a while, but soon it would engulf me like a second skin, and I wouldn’t notice the difference. My arms forced their way into the sleeves, my boots were worked onto my feet, and I tried to settle myself in before I put the visor up.

Ryan was doing the same, seemingly having no problem putting the damn thing on. He was pulling on his boots, inspecting the sides of them – I saw they were white again. I pulled on my gloves and flexed my fingers, reassured by the reinforcement they had also gotten. “They next time we take these off, it better be on a ship home,” I said. I felt proud of my words, the declaration that I really did think we had a chance. Putting a voice to my fears had made them gain momentum, so saying the opposite would accomplish the same thing, right?

Ryan looked up, glove halfway on. He was static, making sure he heard right, perhaps? But then he smiled, slowly showing his teeth, like he had realized why I said what I did; it made me grin back, and keep grinning as Ryan walked over to me and quickly pressed a kiss into my mussed up hair. I only lost the expression when I felt Ryan’s ungloved hand go under my chin and tilt my head up. His eyes were more serious then, but his mouth had a chink in it that suggested that I didn’t have to worry – what had I to worry about with Ryan? The thought didn’t stop my body from feeling as though it was standing in front of an open flame, though.

“The next time we take off our suits,” he muttered, before pressing forward once more to put his lips against my cheek, “I hope I can kiss you more.”

I couldn’t think. It was instead my need to get the last word in – which was just a nice way to say that it was me being an asshole – that made me unthinkingly step closer to Ryan and pull the other man in by the back of his neck to kiss him. It was definitely romance movie poster quality. Brokeback Space Mountain, or something. I vaguely noted that Ryan’s lips were soft against mine, and that both of his hands came up to frame the side of my face – one rough from the holds on his glove, and one warm from his skin. I licked along Ryan’s mouth once before pulling away, wouldn’t want to scare the guy, after all.

“…And I thought I’d have to buy you dinner first,” Ryan said slowly, running a tongue over his bottom lip. I laughed.

“Lifesavers get a free pass,” I smirked, glad to have gained some footing in the exchange. “But you’re right, we need to get going eventually.” Otherwise we might decide to get holed up in the cave for another few hours. I watched Ryan put on his other glove, reattach his flashlight to his suit, and then slip his visor back on. I followed, and suddenly we were faceless again, as though the last several hours hadn’t happened, and Ryan was nothing more than a voice to me.

We picked up our guns. “You ready?” Ryan asked, stepping beside me.

“Fuck yeah I am.” The boulder was entrapped in a small gravitational field from Ryan’s gun and pushed away, leading to the near blinding light of the unfriendly planet in front of them. “Let’s go kick some extraterrestrial ass, Ryan.” I heard the other man chuckle, and even with the barrier of the suit and helmet, my stomach still twisted; I thought maybe I could get used to the feeling, so long as Ryan was there to provoke it every once and a while.

“Lead the way,” he said, and the two of us stepped out into the world.


End file.
